Inthracis knew that he was overmatched. Fighting would be pointless. A god, or perhaps a goddess, had come for him.
He lowered himself to the floor. While it was not quite in him to abase himself, he managed to offer the darkness a stilted bow.
“Your respect is insincere,” said a soft, oily male voice in High Drow.
At the sound of the voice, another irritated rustle ran through the corpses, another moan escaped their decayed lips.
“Their respect, however, is genuine,” said the voice.
Inthracis did not recognize the speaker by voice, but given the word on the wind outside, given the speaker’s use of High Drow, Inthracis could infer the speaker’s identity. He chose his next words with care.
“It is difficult to offer the proper respect when I do not know to whom I am speaking.”
A chuckle. “I think you know who I am.”
At that, the darkness lightened somewhat, enough that Inthracis’s eyes could pierce it. Sound too returned, and the howl of the wind rose.
A masked male drow sat atop Inthracis’s basalt table, legs dangling off the edge and not quite reaching the floor. Shadows alternately lightened and darkened around the drow’s lithe form, swallowing parts of him in blackness for one moment before coughing them back up to visibility the next. A short sword and dagger hung from his belt, and leather armor peeked out from under his tailored, high-collared cloak. Long white hair, highlighted with red, surrounded an angular, vengeful face. He wore a haughty smile on his thin lips, but it did not reach the holes of his eyes, which were visible even through his black mask.
Inthracis’s eyes registered the arcane power emitted by the drow’s blades, the armor, his very flesh. He recognized the avatar, and it was as he had suspected.
“Vhaeraun,” he said, and was irritated that he did not quite keep the awe from his voice.
He looked upon Vhaeraun the Masked God—Lolth’s son and Lolth’s enemy. His hearts hammered still more, and his legs felt weak though he managed not to show it. In the flitting shadows around the drow, he saw that the avatar’s hand was severed at the wrist. The stump seeped blood onto the table.
Inthracis did not care to contemplate how a god might have been so wounded. He also did not care to contemplate why Vhaeraun would be manifesting in Corpsehaven. Inthracis rarely had contact with drow, living or dead, mortal or divine. Drow souls did not typically end up in the Blood Rift.
Vhaeraun hopped off the table and sniffed the air. His dark eyes narrowed.
“Even the air here stinks of spider,” the god said.
To that, Inthracis said nothing. He dared not speak until he knew exactly what was happening.
A dozen possibilities danced through his mind, none of them desirable.
“I require a service, yugoloth.” Vhaeraun said, and the whisper of his voice went hard.
Inthracis stiffened. Not a favor, not a request—a service. It was worse than he had feared. He ran his long forked tongue over his lip ridges while he tried to formulate a suitably vague response.
The darkness swallowed Vhaeraun, and in the next heartbeat the avatar stood behind Inthracis, his breath hot in the ultroloth’s upper left ear.
“Would you refuse me?” Vhaeraun asked, his soft words dripping menace.
“I would not, Masked Lord,” Inthracis answered, though he would have if he could have.
While yugoloths were mercenaries, even they had their limits when it came to patrons. Inthracis had no desire to get involved in whatever divine conflict Vhaeraun may have been engaged in with his mother.
The next moment Vhaeraun was no longer behind him but across the room near one of Inthracis’s bookshelves. The corpses in the wall recoiled as much as their contorted forms allowed at the nearness of the god. Dead eyes stared out of the wall in horror. Even those dead whose hands and arms formed the bookshelf tried to squirm back into the wall, and a score of priceless tomes clattered to the floor. Vhaeraun eyed them and tsked.
Inthracis wondered how his corpses perceived Vhaeraun’s appearance. Surely not that of a drow male.
Vhaeraun looked up and said, “Listen.” He cocked his head to the side and his eyes went hard.
“Do you hear it?”
The wind outside rose and fell, carrying its message of Lolth’s Chosen. The corpses near Vhaeraun moaned again.
Inthracis nodded. “I hear it, Masked Lord. Yor’thae. It says Yor—”
Vhaeraun hissed and held up a hand, silencing Inthracis. The eyes of the corpses in the walls went wide at the demonstration of divine pique.
“Once is enough, ultroloth,” said Vhaeraun. “So you hear the word, but do you know its meaning?”
Inthracis nodded slowly, fear growing in his gut, but Vhaeraun went on as though he had answered in the negative.
“The Yor’thae is the chosen vessel of the Spider Bitch. And this, all this—” With alarming suddenness, the avatar again stood behind Inthracis, hissing angrily in his ear as the fortress shook once more—“is the effort of the Queen of the Demonweb Pits to summon her Chosen and transform herself.”
Inthracis gulped, sensing the god’s rage, sensing the danger he was in.
Vhaeraun reappeared in the shadows across the room, and Inthracis allowed himself a breath.
Vhaeraun reached out with his good hand and ran his fingertips along the bodies in the wall.
They squirmed, moaning anew. Vhaeraun’s fingers came away glistening, and he smiled.
“What do you want of me, Masked Lord?” asked Inthracis, though he knew he would not like the answer.
In an instant, Vhaeraun stood before him, teeth bare, face hot with rage.
“What I want, you insignificant insect, is my mother’s heart fed to demons and shat out for my amusement! What I want, you speck of a creature—” he brandished the stump of his wrist before Inthracis’s face—“is Selvetarm’s obsequious brain torn from his foul head so that I can use his empty skull as a piss pot.”
Inthracis said nothing, merely stared, stood rigid, and held his breath. He was an instant from death. Even the corpses stood still and silent, as though too terrified even to moan.
Vhaeraun took a breath, visibly calmed himself, and offered Inthracis an insincere smile.
“But first things first, Inthracis the ultroloth. Let me be direct: there are three potential candidates for Yor’thae. See them now.”
“Wait, Masked Lord—”
But Vhaeraun did not wait. The avatar closed his eyes, and pain knifed through Inthracis’s brain. Through the pain an image of three drow females formed in his head, and three names:
Quenthel Baenre, Halisstra Melarn, and Danifae Yauntyrr.
The pain subsided, though the image remained, burned into his brain with a divine brand.
Vhaeraun said, “Each of the three are trying to find their way to the city of the Spider whore. My mother is calling them, you see, drawing them to her, testing them as they come. One will be Chosen, one will be her—”
The wind howled anew, and another tremor shook the plane. The word Yor’thae sounded once more through the chamber.
“Yes,” Vhaeraun said, and an irritated tic caused his eye to spasm. He focused on Inthracis and said, “What I require of you is that you kill all three of the candidates.”
Once again, Vhaeraun was suddenly across the library, behind a large lectern.
Inthracis could do nothing else, so he nodded. Privately, he wondered why Vhaeraun could not kill the three drow mortals himself.
The answer occurred to Inthracis a moment after the question: since the so-called Time of Troubles, the Overgod had forbade the gods from directly affecting the existences of mortals. Thus, Vhaeraun needed an ally unbound by the Overgod’s edict, a non-divine ally.